It has occurred to me that the Bible god could not have dictated His book to the Eskimos*, for it says nothing of seal and caribou. Rather than the Canaanites and Hittites, the extreme-northern Americans of the time battled bitter cold and the occasional polar bear. While heat appears in the King James Version of the Bible 241 times; there are only 17 uses of cold; A search for lion yields 141 hits, polar bear, not one.
Speaking of bears, the Bible god grants humankind dominion over all the animals. In the case of the grizzly, it’s a good thing humans invented weaponry, because without spears at minimum, the grizzly would have dominion over us relatively puny, sometimes knee-knocking Homo sapiens. Quoting Genesis to lions and tigers and bears doesn’t seem to impress them. Oh my.
Many characters in the Bible owned slaves. As far as I know, that’s not part of Eskimo culture. In the ancient Middle East one class of men had dominion over another. And they were not condemned for it. Perform a bit of a white-wash and call them servants if that makes you feel better. It was the way of their world. Men of the Bible god owned and sold other men, women, and children.
Didn’t the god of these people, this entity from a higher world, hold a higher standard? Did the Bible, in fact, get it wrong, and those who no longer hold one race above another now have it right? Throughout the ages the Bible has been used to commend and later condemn a whole platoon of motley behaviors.
Fortunately, human social conscience has evolved and is evolving. In some cases the pulpit may have helped to spread the word. But as frequently, and maybe more frequently, preachers have been behind the curve of recognizing an expanding circle of rights.
Forget about gay marriage — some churches still do not grant full respect and rights to women. Many religious authorities continue to assert, in words often left unsaid, that women deserve the status of “household assistants” and not that of complete equals to men. Aren’t women as worthy of standing behind an altar as they are kneeling before it? If not, why not?
Outdated reasoning. Although size and might may have “made right” in the human animal’s distant past — in times of the origination of religious sentiments that persist today — this is far from an essential truth. Power, however, is all today’s men have over women. That and undeservedly revered documents such as the Bible.
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*The indigenous peoples of near-polar regions, including the Yupik, Inuit, and Aleut. [Wiki info]
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Tags: Bible, Freethought Musings, gender
September 1st, 2010 at 10:11 am
I recall once hearing that when the Christian missionaries went to Greenland, the Inuit thought that the heat of Hell sounded just hunky-dory, so the missionaries changed the strategy to describe Hell as a place frozen over.